Navigation in the absence of global positioning systems (GPS) is an area receiving much attention from both military and commercial sectors. Typically, existing solutions that address this type of navigation provide relative navigation (that is, relative to a current position of a navigation platform) by dead reckoning.
In dead reckoning, the navigation platform finds a current position by measuring a course and a distance the platform has moved from some known point. Starting from the known point, the platform measures out the course and the distance from that point, and each ending position will be the starting point for the next course and distance measurement. The platform will then derive a position estimate from an integration of distance and direction over a sequence of steps. This type of navigation, however, is susceptible to navigation drift, which when compounded leads to highly inaccurate position and distance estimates.
Currently, in order to reduce the drift in the dead-reckoning measurements, the navigation platform will employ navigational-aiding sensors to provide images of an area under navigation and navigate from specific features within the area. However, matching one or more sets of these specific features from any overlapping images captured over multiple periods is still susceptible to errors.